‘Use RTI to assert women’s rights’

The Statesman: Bhubaneswar: Monday, 28 September 2015.

Women need to make use of the Right to Information to access their rights, said Shashiprava Bindhani, Commissioner, State Information Commission.

Addressing a convention for recognizing women’s rights over land and agriculture with special focus on single women here, Bindhani said NGO’s need to focus on women as a whole and single women in particular as far as the land rights issue is concerned.

More than 400 women from 10 districts participated in the convention where a report on land rights of single women was released and women farmers shared their experiences as far as otaning land titles was concerned.

Action Aid organized the convention in collaboration with CIRTD, Sundergarh, DAS, Ganjam and Puri, SMPUP, Bargarh, AESS, Koraput,CCWD, Khurda, Jagarana, Rayagada, Antaranga, Kandhamal, SAI, Nuapada, Sehada, Jharsuguda, UAA, Ganjam and Young India, Puri.

Action Aid has worked with Ganjam district administration and facilitated homestead land titles to 2388 single women and out of that 2250 women have got housing support from government.

Amrita Patel, Project Advisor, SRCW, Dept of W&CD also shared the salient points of the land rights study on single women and opined that more work needs to be done to clarify what is a legally acceptable definition of single women.

Snehanjali Mohanty, Member, Odisha state Commission for Women also appreciated this endeavour and hoped that it is done in all other districts of the state.

Addressing the convention, Debabrat Patra, Regional Manager Action Aid said that work on single women has been going on since one decade but still a lot needs to be done in this front. Starting from disaster context to the development programmes, women in general and single women needs to be prioritized both in government programmes and NGO programmes.

“We need to spread this work in other districts of the state as well”, he added.

A panel discussion was also undertaken, chaired by Dr Aurobindo Behera, IAS (Retd.). Other speakers were Sukeshi Oram, former member, National Women Commission, Dr Sabita Mishra, Principal Scientist,ICAR – Central Institute of Women in Agriculture.